Kevin was 21 at the time. He heard something on the scanner. Saw a police car speed by his house.
Curious, he tried to follow the squad. He was there so fast there was no police crime scene tape around the bikes and scooter yet. He drove away and told a police officer what he'd seen.
Kevin: "He said, yeh we know all about that. I know about the bikes. And that was it. It was like I was bothering him. We backed out and left and that was it."
Trish Van Pilsum: "He didn't take your name or phone number."
Kevin: "He didn't take my name."
Trish Van Pilsum: "He didn't ask, did you see a man lurking around?"
Kevin: "Didn't ask me a thing."
Nor, it appears, did the officer pass along his conversation with Kevin to investigators. It strikes the new investigators now working on the case 14 years later as strange. It also strikes them as a huge problem.
In fact, investigators didn't know about Kevin at all until this October [2003].
This came about because he met a federal marshal at a party who urged Kevin to talk to the lead investigator of the Wetterling investigation.
Kevin: "He was really shocked. 'Cause after I told him who I talked to, what I seen, he couldn't believe he didn't know about me. In reality, I could have been the kidnapper and they never would have found me."
In fact, of the thousands and thousands of pages of leads, none places Kevin at the scene around the time of the kidnapping.
A source close to the case said they wasted 14 years looking for him.
There’s also a video of that interview. It’s totally CRAZY that the cop didn’t follow up. Even the cops (I think it was the chief back then?) admit there were lots of egos between them and the FBI so info wasn’t shared. What a shame. Makes you wonder how much more was overlooked.
And what if the cop wasn’t a cop but just told the car dude he was... Like he said, he could have been the kidnapper or even the “cop” could have been the kidnapper. Like the boys said, it was dark and hard to see. Did he have on a uniform? Did he show the car dude his badge? Was he in a police car? We don’t know.
It’s interesting that everyone keeps saying “bikes” when Jacob and Trevor had bikes, but Aaron had a push scooter. I suppose just glancing over into the ditch (and how did car dude see into the ditch in the dark?) one would just see handle bars and wheels and assume there were bikes but that’s just one more inaccuracy. Oh, and Aaron’s video (a couple years ago as an adult), he said the guy had a hand gun but, again, it’s reported as a “shot gun or hand gun.” I would think someone who just got back from Iraq would know the difference and if he said it was a hand gun then a hand gun it was.
Back to the car dude - ok, so he’s been cleared but has his last name ever been released? I’m sure he’s known in the community but I haven’t seen his last name. Back then people listened to scanners as a pastime so his story is believable. Where did he live to get there so quickly? Or were the cops that slow? It’s not likely there were many officers on the force or on duty that night. Were they city police or sheriff deputies who might have been several miles away in another part of the county? I assume some were at home and took time to get dressed. So many questions.
Who is the "we" who backed out?